Monday, January 9, 2017

Bad bot better

Like so many fund titans these days, Laurence D. Fink is betting on machines to turn around BlackRock Inc.’s beleaguered stock-picking business.Trouble is, they just might have made things worse.BlackRock’s main quantitative hedge-fund strategies -- which use computer models to sort through vast amounts of data to pick out patterns -- were on track for losses in 2016, according to a monthly client update sent out in late December. Of the five included, four were set for their worst returns on record, data through November showed. A separate investor presentation with a broader quant lineup showed that almost two-thirds underperformed.